


Josh's Journey

by pipisafoat



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 07:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: (now accepting suggestions for a better title)Jolie Lyman is a sweet girl by all accounts. The problem is: she isn't a girl.





	Josh's Journey

His mom finds out when he’s seven, when he cries and cries without being able to speak through the tears for so long that they call her to school. Jolie Lyman flings himself into his mother’s arms and finally, finally squeezes out words: “I don’t want to be the first woman president!”

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to be president when you grow up,” Debbie replies, rubbing her daughter’s back and exchanging baffled glances with the other adults in the room. Of all the things to become hysterical about!

“But I want to be p-p-president,” Jolie sobs. “Just not the first woman president!”

Debbie frowns, then nods sharply. “Then I will make sure another woman gets elected soon, so you can be president without being the first woman.”

She honestly expected her solution to work, but instead, Jolie heaves out more sobs, red curls bouncing as the child’s entire frame shakes with the emotions of the breakdown. “Can’t I be president without being a woman?” her daughter gasps, big eyes finally meeting hers, bloodshot and streaming tears.

“You’re a girl, Jolie,” Debbie replies sensibly, “so you will be a woman one day whether you’re president or not.”

Once again, Mrs Lyman is surprised by the tears increasing instead of stopping. “I don’t want to be a woman!” Jolie shrieks, stamping her foot and balling her hands into fists. “I’m not a girl and I don’t want to be a woman! I’m a boy! I’m a boy!”

They move schools not three weeks later after Joanie dies and Jolie - then Joe - gets a reputation as “the weird he-she God punished by killing her sister.”

* * *

He starts seeing a psychiatrist soon after changing schools, Dr. Christine Stanley. Dr. Stanley is one of only a handful of psychiatrists who claims expert status in transsexual issues. She’s actually the one who tells Joe about the term ‘transsexual’ and holds him while he cries in relief at not being the only person who feels this way. When she brings in his parents, they cry as well.

It’s an hour’s drive each way to see Dr. Stanley, but everyone agrees that she’s worth the time and expense. She prescribes testosterone so his puberty happens differently, gives them information about surgery, helps with his pain over having the wrong body, and even helps with things that aren’t about his gender. He shares his guilt over Joanie’s death with her and eventually stops feeling that way, most of the time. He shares his ambitions of running the country, of being in the White House, and Dr. Stanley encourages him while still keeping him aware of the challenges. He buckles down in school then, and his reputation as a weird he-she from one school becomes a reputation of a mostly normal, nerdy boy in his new school.

She’s there for him on June 30, 1969, when he’s so full of feelings and turmoil from the weekend’s riots in Manhattan that his mother keeps him home from school. He sees her once a week instead of once a month for a while after that, trying to work through what happened and its media coverage, but in the end he locks it away and puts on a smile to go back to his previous schedule.

* * *

Joe’s dad struggles. There’s no other way to put it: he struggles.

The thing Joe likes most about the word “struggle” is how active it is. Dad struggles. He wrestles and fights and thinks and _struggles_. He puts in the time and effort every day to understand his daughter-cum-son, to treat him well, to use the words Joe wants and the name Joe wants. It isn’t easy, but he works at it every single day, hard enough that anyone who knows him can tell how much he’s trying.

Dad struggles because it’s the only way he can show his love.

* * *

“Mom? Dad? I, uh, I have … Can we talk for a minute?”

Dad looks over the top of his paper, then folds it neatly, apparently seeing the seriousness on his son’s face.

“What is it, Joe?” Mom asks, drying her hands on a towel and sitting at the table. “Here, sit with us.”

He takes a half step toward the chair before standing firm. “I think I’d rather be standing,” he replies. “It’s … well, it’s my name. I’m ready to change it legally, but not to Joe. It’s….” He sighs heavily and rakes a hand through his short curls as he gathers his thoughts. No future president should be stuttering through something like he is. “Dad, you’re Joseph. It’s like stealing your name to be Joe, and if I changed legally to Joe, it would probably be Joseph, too. I love you, but I don’t want to be a junior.

“Mom, Joe was a great idea in the beginning. It was a great name for you to suggest, and it’s been good to use it. I like that it was so close to Jolene, because that’s the name you two gave me, but more masculine. It was really good, but it’s not me. It’s not who I am now or who I want to become.”

He gives them a minute to process his words. Dad’s frowning and absently running a finger around the rim of his black coffee mug. “If I weren’t Joseph, would you want to be Joe?” he asks finally.

“No,” he answers immediately. “No, it’s a good name, but it’s not for me, and it’s not entirely about it being your name.”

“How about Joel?” Mom offers, hands folded placidly in her lap as usual. “It’s not Joe, but it’s also close to Jolene and masculine.”

He shakes his head, feeling the curls shift on his scalp as he does. “I already have a name picked out,” he tells them. “Mom, Dad … I’m Josh. Joshua Noah Lyman.”

Dad smiles at this. “You took my middle name.”

“Is that okay?” He’d meant it as a compliment, a tribute, but it suddenly strikes him that it might be stealing somehow.

“More than okay, son.”

Mom stands up and steps toward him, stopping halfway. “My son, Josh,” she says slowly, as though trying it out. “Joshua Noah Lyman. I like it.”

Josh grins at her. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Dad responds. “Now hug your mother so I can get my hug.”

* * *

“And this is my roommate Chris. Chris, this is my dad.”

Josh watches as his father shakes hands with his roommate. He hopes his dad doesn’t accidentally out him to Chris; he’s been careful so far to keep his trans status private at Harvard.

“This is my, uh, this is Amy Gardner,” Chris says, introducing the girl on the bed. Josh is kind of impressed when he realizes that two months of the two of them screwing like bunnies have passed without him hearing her name yet.

“Joseph Lyman,” Dad says, offering his hand to her as well.

“Nice to meet you,” she replies.

“So I have to ask, as a father, how are you and J getting along, Chris? Is there anything the two of you need that I can help you with?”

Chris exchanges a surprised look with Josh. “We get on okay, sir. The only thing I can think we’d like to have is a lamp for our research table.” Chris gestures to the small table under the window between their desks. It’s covered in the law books Dad loaned Josh, library books, and a few half-used notebooks with colorful pens scattered on top of them.

“J and I can pick one up at the store. Do you need any food while we’re there? Or you can ride with us if you’d prefer.”

Chris smiles. “Thank you, but I’m okay.”

“Amy, how about you?”

The girl looks a bit hesitant. “Actually, if you really don’t mind, I would like to go with you. There are a few things I need to pick up.”

“J, is that okay with you?”

Josh shrugs. He honestly doesn’t know her at all, just that she really likes sex - and that her period is coming up soon and she doesn’t like sex then. Hmm. She’s probably after period products and is embarrassed to say so. “No problem,” he tells her. “Glad to help.” There’s no way he’s telling his roommate’s booty call that he knows what she’s after or that he once needed them as well, but he’ll do what he can to make her shame disappear.

* * *

Joanie never knows, at least not officially in her life. Josh visits her grave every year, and the year he turns 27 he realizes he still hasn’t come out to her. It doesn’t seem any weirder than talking to her about anything else, so he wracks his brain for the speech he wrote himself when he came out to his extended family.

Halfway through his haphazard repetition, the thought strikes him that Sam Seaborn, that new intern who can’t stop talking, could turn his half-remembered catastrophe into a speech worthy of a president. He then finds himself laughing until he chokes at the idea of a presidential address about being trans. (Then he finds himself laughing so he doesn’t cry, then actually crying, at the likelihood of the country ever electing a transgender president. He hasn’t given up his childhood dream, but now he knows too much about the world around him to think it probable.)

* * *

His policy has always, always, always been that his privates are private, so it’s incredibly galling the first year he’s not able to see his old doctor in Connecticut. He bites the bullet and schedules an appointment as soon as he’s back in Washington, careful to do so on his home phone. He has his assistant block it out as “Doctor”, which is specific enough to ensure she doesn’t ask while vague enough that he feels safe.

Bransom notices, though. He comes into Josh’s office and frowns like a grumpy grizzly, though the comparison isn’t one Josh would ever share aloud. He complains about having scheduled a meeting during that time that he wanted Josh in. He complains about how hard it is to move doctor appointments, about how hard it will be to move this meeting. He complains about the entire healthcare system in so much detail that Josh, an evangelical Democrat, wants to fall asleep with his face in a sewage tank just to escape the conversation.

And then it happens. Bransom notices the one question he didn’t ask, the one piece of information Josh didn’t volunteer. “What are you going for, anyway?”

Josh freezes, entirely out of his control. He feels like he’s about to be hit by a bus full of nuclear warheads. “Nothing to worry about,” he replies, voice tight with how much he wants not to be in this conversation.

“Just a regular checkup?” Bransom asks, barreling over Josh’s small attempt to answer with more questions. “Who do you see? Most staff-level people in my office go to Dr Kentrall.”

“I think that’s pretty personal,” Josh replies, tension rising in his voice and shoulders. He takes a deep shuddering breath, then another, to try to calm down. The man is friendly, talkative, and helpful. He doesn’t know what his questions are doing to Josh.

“So you’re not going to a general practitioner then, Josh? That means I do worry. I care about you. What kind of doctor is it? Are you okay?”

His teeth clench. “I’m fine,” he grits out without loosening his jaw. “Drop it.”

Bransom does drop it, changing the subject to the meeting that needs rescheduling without even a pretense of subtlety. Josh slowly uncoils as they discuss the timing and content, and by the time Bransom is ready to leave, he’s back to a normal background stress level.

“Oh, and Josh?” The larger man stops in the door but doesn’t turn back. “About that doctor. Tell me or not, it’s up to you, but if anything turns out a problem, I’ve got your back.”

Josh is saved a response by Bransom shutting the door behind him, but it doesn’t stop the responses that stream through his mind. _It’s not my back, it’s my vagina. My sex is the problem. You wouldn't have my back if you knew, even if you are a Democrat._

* * *

CJ is drunk. He’s seen her tipsy during the campaign, had a great time with her tipsy even, but this is the first time he’s seen her outright drunk.

“JOSH!” she shouts, weaving through the crowd in the hotel room. “Get drunk, my friend, for tonight we are victorious.”

“Victory is ours,” he replies with a grin, raising his glass of wine in a silent salute to her.

“VICTORY IS OURS!” she shouts, and the whole room cheers and yells it back.

“All we need now is a keg,” he muses.

CJ snorts. “A keg of glory, for we are victorious and glorious.”

“Exactly! Half for tonight, half for four years from now when we win reelection.” Josh grins at his friend, then impulsively reaches out and hugs her. “Good job, CJ.”

“Good job yourself, Joshua,” she murmurs into his ear. “You give good hugs.”

He shrugs as she detaches. “Only the best for the victorious and glorious CJ.”

She laughs loudly. “Someone get this man a keg of glory!” Another random cheer from the crowd greets her words. “You know, Josh, I think we’ve gotten pretty close during this campaign, don’t you? And we’re only going to get closer when we’re in the White House.”

“Please, God, tell me you are not about to proposition me.”

CJ gives him a look of surprise and disgust. “Ew! No! Never!”

“You certainly know how to deflate a man’s … ego,” Josh replies with a wink and a smirk.

She slaps at his arm but misses wildly, swaying on her feet with her momentum. “I just mean it’d be like sleeping with a brother. You’re my brother, Josh. I’m not incestuous.”

Her brother. Josh is someone’s brother. It’s been decades since he was a brother, and that ended with his sister dead, but…. “Good to know,” he tells her, surprised when his voice breaks.

CJ eyes him carefully, though he’s not sure how well her perception is working through all the alcohol. “Are you happy or upset about that?” she finally asks, proving that his doubts were well-founded.

“Honestly, a bit of both?” he says quietly. “I don’t want to talk about it here, though.”

“Not in this room full of people, not tonight, or not at all?”

He takes a minute to think about it, suddenly realizing that it seems right to talk about Joanie with CJ. He hadn’t named their relationship before now, but she’s right: they’re siblings. “Not in this room full of people.”

CJ leads him by the hand out of the room, down the hall, and into her considerably smaller hotel room, either ignoring or not noticing the catcalls following the two of them. Josh had tried to quell them with glares and shakes of his head, but he imagines the blushing left his efforts ineffectual. As the door swings shut behind them, CJ sighs and kicks off her shoes before sprawling on one half of the queen bed. “Join me?”

Josh toes off his shoes and joins her on the bed, sitting up with his ankles crossed. CJ shifts closer, then pats his thigh. “You’re happy I think of you as a brother?”

He nods, then notices she’s not at an angle for that to be very effective. “Very happy. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I feel the same way about you.”

“You think of me as a brother?” CJ giggles. “Josh, I’m not … like that.”

“Like what?” he asks, instantly on guard.

“Like … the people who aren’t the gender they were born. I can’t remember the word. Too much wine.”

He relaxes again at her wording. “Ah. Transsexual. Or transgender. You’re not a transgender man.”

“Nope. Just a woman. No transgender here.”

“Do you know … I mean….”

CJ laughs. “I don’t know if I know anyone transgender, no. I wouldn’t mind, but everybody I know is boring in the gender.”

“Not me,” Josh says before he can talk himself out of it.

“Oh, really?” CJ sits up and looks at him, fascinated. “How many transgender people do you know?”

He laughs. He can’t help it. Here he is coming out to her, but she thinks he’s saying he knows trans people. “A lot,” he finally gets out. Dr. Stanley had introduced him to a lot of people like him when he was younger. “Including myself.”

“You’re transgender?” CJ still looks fascinated, though now a bit embarrassed. “Should I have known that?”

Josh shakes his head. “I’m what’s called ‘stealth’ - it means not many people know. My family, Leo, Sam, and now you.”

“Wow.” She scoots up to the head of the bed, rearranges the pillows, and sits beside him for about half a second before turning and nestling into his side. “Thank you. I’m … honored. And your secret is safe with me.”

* * *

He looks up from his desk at a knock on his open door to see Sam looking a bit embarrassed. "Was I insensitive earlier, about the ballerina thing?"

Josh shrugs. It was his own damn fault for admitting to his four-year-old self's dancing aspirations. "Yeah, but it's fine. Why?"

Sam steps in and shuts the door. "Because of your gender."

"No man wants it spread he once wanted to be a ballerina, no matter how old he was at the time."

The younger man sighs and leans against the wall behind the door. "I mean because of your gender then. Because you're transgender."

Josh blinks and drops his pen without quite meaning to. "Sam, that's ... that's nice of you, but no. It means more that you think of me as a man first and as transgender hours later. The ballerina thing is embarrassing but not outing me, so it's fine. I mean, I'm going to find a way to embarrass you in return, but it's fine.”

* * *

“Anyone ever call you Jo?” Josh is surprised to hear his own question, but it’s nothing to the look on first Kenny’s face, then Joey’s as her assistant translates.

“Yes,” she answers aloud, then signs something that Kenny takes a moment to relay back to Josh. “My mother called me Jo when I was young. Why do you ask?”

Josh shrugs. “No, I … I just….”

“Because he is a strange, strange man,” Sam puts in, and after a pause for Kenny to catch her up, Joey laughs in her unique manner that would be annoying from a hearing person but is just endearing instead. He’s never been more glad she’s not sleeping with Al Keefer anymore.

“I knew that,” Kenny says as Joey’s voice. “I was wondering if he had a specific reason for asking that strange question instead of a different strange question.”

“Waiting for poll results makes us all a little strange,” President Bartlet says in a somewhat distant voice. “Jo, Joey, you said those are short for Josephine, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Joey speaks.

Josh finds the words falling out of his mouth before he can stop them. “My Joe was kind of short for Jolene, but then I decided on Josh because my father was Joseph.”

“Really?” Kenny says. “You’re—“ He cuts off abruptly as a slap rings out in the Oval Office. Rubbing his shoulder, he turns to watch Joey’s fingers before looking back to Josh. "Sorry. That was me. Joey just told me to butt out and catch her up. Give her a second.” His hands fly, then her hands fly for a long moment, then Kenny turns bright red, then she signs something at closer to her usual pace that he translates for her. “Jolene is a nice name, but not for you.”

Josh smiles. “Thanks. That’s what I thought, too. Think.”

“Would it be out of line for me to try to get one of my granddaughters named Jolene?” the president asks, raising one eyebrow at Josh.

“No, sir. I don’t feel like it’s my name at all, so I have no claim on it. It’s like it belonged to a childhood friend who just happened to be the person I grew out of.”

“Excellent.”

Toby finally breaks his silence, surprising Josh at his restraint thus far. “Other than Joey - and Kenny - did everyone else in the room know that shockingly massive piece of information about Josh before I did?”

Sam shrugs. “I didn’t know the name.”

“Nobody knew the name,” Josh rushes to clarify.

“I knew the name,” Leo argues.

Josh rolls his eyes. “You knew my father before he was good at using Josh all the time. Of course you knew the name. It doesn’t count.”

“Does CJ know?”

“Do I know what, Toby? The top sheet numbers? I sure do. Mr. President?”

“Go ahead, please, CJ.”

* * *

They’re an hour earlier than expected when they pull into Josh’s mom’s driveway. There are several cars lined up on the street, but the driveway is open, so he sends Donna on into the house without knocking as he opens the door to the backseat of their new SUV. Josh hears his mother’s excited yell of “Donna!” and his wife’s joyful cry of “Debbie!” and smiles to himself as he deals with the straps that still frustrate him a week later.

Arms laden, he makes his way into the house at the same time that Donna emerges from the hall bathroom. “Bridge party,” she warns him quietly as they turn as one to enter the living room.

“Josh!” His mother pops up from her chair to hug him carefully, then draws back to admire the bundle in his arms. “And this must be my first grandchild.”

He leans in and gives her a kiss on the cheek without thinking, returning her grin. “Mom, this is Kyle Alexander Moss-Lyman. Kyle, this is your grandma.”

“Grammy,” she corrects, stroking the little boy’s head.

“Jolie, I didn’t know you were a lesbian,” one of the ladies waiting at the bridge table interrupted.

Josh’s jaw twitches and he closes his eyes to take a deep breath. Donna reaches over to rub his back and answers for him.

“I don’t think a man can be a lesbian,” she says in a conversational tone that puts Josh and his mother on instant alert. “My husband and I are both straight. Heterosexual. In a very loving and _very_ sexually fulfilling marriage, since you’re interested in things that aren’t your business.”

“Young lady, I was addressing your wife, not you.”

“Husband,” Josh and his mother interrupt in concert.

The woman waves the correction off dramatically. “I do have a question for you, though, Donna. Who got you up the duff? How does it feel to be a cheater as well as a homosexual?”

Josh’s mom slams a palm flat against the nearest wall. “That’s it, Cynthia. Please leave. You are no longer welcome in my house or at my events. I liked having an old Connecticut friend nearby, but you have not acted like a friend several times now. My son Joshua and his family are vastly more important to me than a superficial connection to a place I used to live.”

Cynthia mutters the whole way out of the door, and Josh busies himself with the infant in his arms as everyone else engages in an awkward silence. Kyle settles down after a position change, and Josh looks up to find the room watching him. He flushes and returns his gaze to his new son. “Uh, hey, everyone. I’m Josh, and this is my wife Donna and my son Kyle.”

“Some of us have met the two of you, but let us get a closer look at the little one!”

“How old is he?”

“How did you pick his name?”

Josh hands Kyle to Donna and lets her handle all of the questions, reaching out to wrap an arm around his mother’s shoulders as she stays back from the crowd. “You didn’t have to lose a friend over me, Mom,” he tells her softly.

“No, I had to lose a fake friend over her total disrespect for people and ideas that are very important to me,” she replies just as quietly. “It’s good to have you all here, Josh. The ladies will clear out in a few minutes, and we have just quiet family time for as long as you’d like.”

He’s so ready for quiet family time. “Love you, Mom.”

“Love you too, son.”


End file.
